Predestination, John Calvin

[Strike For The South]

Does anyone here belivie in it?

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a few things

[Centurion1]

no im a heathen catholic.

predestination just sounds stupid and depressing to me.

[Major Robert Dump]

I've known a few Calvinists. Apparently they were predestined to smoke lots of pot and play D&D with my ex-wife, "D&D" being a clever cover story for sexual relations. That or maybe they really did play D&D and then had sex dressed as orks and yeti.

[Skullheadhq]

no im a heathen catholic.

predestination just sounds stupid and depressing to me.

And an heretic at that. Did you ever read some works of St. Augustine? Calvin's and Augustine's ideas were very similiar. With the difference that Calvin was excommunicated and Augustine canonized. You do sound like an adherent of (semi-)Pelagianism, a notoir heresy, denounced by pope Innocentius I himself and anathemised at the council of Ephesus in 431 A.D .

[Strike For The South]

So if your fate is already decided what's the point of being moral?

[Skullheadhq]

So if your fate is already decided what's the point of being moral?

God's irresistible grace will make his elect live in a Godly manner, I suppose.

[TheLastDays]

So if your fate is already decided what's the point of being moral?

IMO predestination and free will work together in a way we don't really understand yet, kinda like the trinity or the Christ's nature as being both fully god and fully man.
We live in free will and so our actions do matter as we are responsible for what we do.

[Rhyfelwyr]

IMO predestination and free will work together in a way we don't really understand yet, kinda like the trinity or the Christ's nature as being both fully god and fully man.
We live in free will and so our actions do matter as we are responsible for what we do.

Hate to break it to you but you are 0% Calvinist.

And an heretic at that. Did you ever read some works of St. Augustine? Calvin's and Augustine's ideas were very similiar. With the difference that Calvin was excommunicated and Augustine canonized. You do sound like an adherent of (semi-)Pelagianism, a notoir heresy, denounced by pope Innocentius I himself and anathemised at the council of Ephesus in 431 A.D .

Catholicism =/= semi-Pelagianism. Semi-pelagianism/Arminianism is an offshoot of Reformed theology, Arminius himself studied under Calvin's successor Theodore Beza at Geneva.

As for Augustine he was Calvin's hero figure but in all honestly he wasn't very 'Calvinistic'. If you really want to see the roots of double predestination (the Calvinist kind, with Luther's being single predestination) in the Catholic Church then you will find it very clearly in the works of Aquinas.

So if your fate is already decided what's the point of being moral?

Being moral is a noble end in itself, not a means to salvation.

So some things to clear up...

People always conflate two things when talking about free will and Calvinism. The first is free will in general, the second man's ability to be saved.

Now when it comes to the first, this is where God's foreknowledge comes in. Everything might be pretedermined, but only because there is only one way anyone would act in any given situation. Now in a past debate on this forum I called this determinism and while people didn't like what they thought that term to mean, in the end the atheists came round and said that my idea of determinism is in fact their idea of free will. Basically, in any situation, you will be prone to act a certain way, and so you act that way. That's all it is, nothing malicious there IMO. You might even wonder how what appears to be common sense could have at one time been such a revolutionary doctrine and one that still abhors so many people, I guess its just because of all the fantastical theories other theologians went to the trouble of forming because they thought the idea of predestination to be so horrible.

Anyway, what Calvinists do wholeheartedly affirm is that man is competely unable to turn to God and ask to be saved without God's grace first making them inclined to do so.

This is what people dislike most about Calvinism. For some reason they obsess on the foreknowledge aspect of it, although in reality what they have a problem with is the 'total depravity' part, since that's the part when man loses all ability to save himself, and instead God chooses a number of people to be saved.

And this for me is what Christianity is all about. I find the idea of claiming I had the least role in my being born again to be unthinkable, I just don't understand the mentality of Christians that can really come out and say that they made a decision to save themselves.

[TheLastDays]

Hate to break it to you but you are 0% Calvinist.

This might be true, and yet I am as much/little Arminian as I am Calvinist.
I believe that everything is predetermined and yet it all comes down to a choice based upon free will. Doesn't make sense? True, but neither does the claim that three are three and yet one.

Now I have a question for you: There are scriptures that state, that God wants everyone to be saved. If salvation comes down solely to predestination and God chooses those that get saved, leaving them no free will on the matter, why does He not simply elect everyone?

[Centurion1]

And an heretic at that. Did you ever read some works of St. Augustine? Calvin's and Augustine's ideas were very similiar. With the difference that Calvin was excommunicated and Augustine canonized. You do sound like an adherent of (semi-)Pelagianism, a notoir heresy, denounced by pope Innocentius I himself and anathemised at the council of Ephesus in 431 A.D .

The issue with that being that the Church has moved away from its beliefs in 431 AD. According to your reasoning I should also be a total heretic for believing in evolution. Also Augustine and Calvin have superficial similarities at best.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

I'm a Presbyterian and I do believe in Predestination.... To a certain extent anyhow.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I believe God gives us the free choice to be predestined or not.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The issue with that being that the Church has moved away from its beliefs in 431 AD. According to your reasoning I should also be a total heretic for believing in evolution. Also Augustine and Calvin have superficial similarities at best.

Augustine believed in evolution.

[Centurion1]

The church as a whole did not in 500 AD.

I daresay you know exactly what I meant but are just being difficult.

[classical_hero]

Augustine believed in evolution.

No he did not. He believed in an Earth that was not many thousands of years old. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120112.htm This the title of one the chapters of his Magnum Opus "The City of God" in the 12th book " Of the Falseness of the History Which Allots Many Thousand Years to the World's Past" Here he is arguing against an old earth, which is the crux of the issue of Evolution. Given enough time, miracles can happen.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Does anyone here belivie in it?

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a few things

It's pretty simple really. The basic argument goes like this:

1. God is all knowing, all seeing.

2. Ergo, God knows what will happen in the future.

3. Ergo, the future is fixed.

4. Ergo, it has already been decided whether or not I go to Hell.

The other part of the argument goes like this:

1. When Man was first created he had free will.

2. Sin has so corrupted Man's understanding of the world he is chained and cannot choose freely.

3. God can release you from Sin though Christ.

4. It is already decided who will be released from Sin (see above).

5. Anyone released from Sin would obviously choose God, because any other choice would be inconcievable.

It all swings on the idea that God has foreknowledge, and therefore the future is inherrently fixed.

[Banquo's Ghost]

It's pretty simple really. The basic argument goes like this:

1. God is all knowing, all seeing.

2. Ergo, God knows what will happen in the future.

3. Ergo, the future is fixed.


It all swings on the idea that God has foreknowledge, and therefore the future is inherrently fixed.

That's where the argument falls down - it assumes that Time is a strict progression from cause to effect.

Whereas it's actually a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey erm, stuff.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

That's where the argument falls down - it assumes that Time is a strict progression from cause to effect.

Whereas it's actually a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey erm, stuff.

It also falls down because it assumes God is, erm, bothered with that.

[Banquo's Ghost]

It also falls down because it assumes God

Even further fixed.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Even further fixed.

That is a basic assumption in Theology.

[Vladimir]

That's where the argument falls down - it assumes that Time is a strict progression from cause to effect.

Whereas it's actually a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey erm, stuff.

Is it bad that one of my favorite Tennant Dr. Who episodes is one where the main characters are seen the least?

Blink is brilliant though.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Regarding the debate on trinitarianism, I just like the fact that nobody noticed that Jesus was in fact a woman.

In the name of the (Divine) Father, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[Skullheadhq]

Regarding the debate on trinitarianism, I just like the fact that nobody noticed that Jesus was in fact a woman.

In the name of the (Divine) Father, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ah, well that explains why Scripture states that no women should teach...
And Augustine (and Calvin to some extend) believed Genesis should not be taken too literal. Since why should God rest on the 7th day when he can't be tired. And why was the earth created in 7 days when God could have done it in no time? The sentence 'omnia simul fecit ' somewhere in the apocryphs proved that theory for Augustine.

[TheLastDays]

Does anyone here belivie in it?

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a few things

I'm not a 100% calvinist but what are the issues you have a hard time figuring out?

[Papewaio]

We can measure quite accurately several different Isotope ratios. Different half lives lend themselves to different clocks. The age if the Earth is well known. It's billions of years +/- millions. Not thousands.